


Good Morning and Good Night

by Pigeonsplotinsecrecy



Category: 9-1-1: Lone Star (TV 2020)
Genre: Chracter Study, Eating Disorders, Gen, Marjan is doing her best
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:48:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24339142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pigeonsplotinsecrecy/pseuds/Pigeonsplotinsecrecy
Summary: Marjan seems so self-assured to everyone around her, but she carries a secret that dominates her entire life.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	Good Morning and Good Night

Marjan wakes up to an empty stomach, and for just that split second, she is at ease. It is the end of July, and the Texas heat is dense in the air, humid and heavy, pinning her down in her bed even though the emptiness makes her feel so light that she could float away. She stays in bed for a while because the second she gets out, the fury of her day will begin. Her thoughts will begin to create a vortex in her brain, and by noon, Marjan will be completely lost in it, caught in the disorienting cycling of her daily life. When Marjan is in bed, she doesn’t have to think about breakfast, lunch, or dinner. She can pretend that she’s still asleep for just a half hour more before the thoughts come pounding into her brain whether she wants them to or not.

Eventually, as the sun moves further into the pale sky, Marjan knows she can’t keep prolonging the inevitable. The heaviness of the lie she is living hits Marjan as she swings her body into a sitting position and dangles her legs over the side of the bed. Everyone she knows thinks that she is a different person because this illness she has is one that, for the most part, goes unnoticed. She aches. She suffers, but it’s not something that she shares with anyone, and this thing that is such a big part of her life goes so unknown. Her real personality cannot even shine through.

The first word that many people use to describe Marjan is confident, and it’s a good defense. The sleek veneer of confidence eases people’s minds. They think that nothing can be wrong because as far as they’re aware, she’s got it all together. She seems so self-assured and driven, and in some areas of her life, she is, but in others, she’s paralyzed by the fear that she will never be good enough. Even so, she doesn’t want anyone to see that fear because if they did, they’d know how majorly her life is crumbling. Having a crumbling life is so far from perfect that she doesn’t even like to think about it.

It’s funny to Marjan that her problem is so bodily focused because she’s never been the kind of girl who cared that much about what she looked like. She liked fashion well enough. Make up could be fun, but what she wore and how she did up her face didn’t have anything to do with wanting to look pretty. They were just cool ways of expressing herself. But eating disorders weren’t about vanity, and as silly as it may sound, her eating disorder doesn’t have that much to do with her body _. I don’t care what I look like. My body is just like a canvas. I treat it the way I do to express how I’m feeling inside._

Marjan heads down the hall and heads straight to the bathroom. She goes to the bathroom before she weighs herself because that 0.6 pound difference matters to her. She steps on the scale, and it fills her with dread to see the red numbers flicker to a weight that was .2 pounds heavier than her goal for that day. In the grand scheme of things, .2 pounds was nothing, but it didn’t feel like nothing. It felt like a failure and the worst kind of start to the day.

She skips breakfast because ever since she was a kid, she’s convinced herself that breakfast makes her feel sick, so she can’t eat it. It had been something her mom said once and Marjan had warped it to her own harmful purposes. She’d parroted her mother’s words, and they’d commiserated over the shared feeling of queasiness in the morning, but really, Marjan never felt sick in the morning. She just didn’t want to eat. Still doesn’t want to eat, and it’s been going on so long that she doubts she’ll ever want to eat. She does eat, of course. People have to eat, but she puts it off as much as she can.

Marjan gets ready for work, and she tries not to look at her body because if her eyes linger on any feature too long, she’ll get distracted, and she can’t be late for her shift. She hurries up and puts on her uniform, relieved that she never has to decide what to wear to work. She just chooses her uniform pieces and puts them together. She has more choices to make when she puts on her hijab, but those choices aren’t the same. They’re the kind of choices that make her feel comfortable with herself, so she puts her hijab on easily.

Work progresses easily. They have a few calls, but nothing too major happens. Not everyday is jam packed with action, and that’s a good thing. Marjan prays to have days like this when no major disasters happen. The biggest disaster that happens is lunch, which comes too quickly for Marjan’s liking. She chooses not to eat anything while the others get out their lunches and begin to eat them like normal people do. Marjan is not normal.

“Are you sure you’re not hungry?” T.K. asks as they sit at the table. If anyone sees beyond Marjan’s lies, it’s him. Marjan sees a lot of herself in T.K. They’re both good at acting like everything’s fine. They distract people with what’s really going on with levity and so many smiles. She’s not sure what he knows, but the way that he looks at her sometimes sets her on edge. Maybe she’s just being paranoid, but he’s the only one who ever looks like he doesn’t buy her bullshit excuses. Even Paul seems to not question her too much.

Most days, she tries to eat when she’s around people so that they don’t get suspicious, but every so often, she can’t help but try to get away with it, and she’s found that most people don’t go straight from “she’s not eating a meal” to “eating disorder.” For the most part, as long as they see her eat, they assume that she’s fine because people with eating disorders didn’t eat right? They just breathed in the air and wasted away as their bodies got absolutely no nutrition. Marjan knew she had a problem, but it was hard to take it seriously when she did eat. She ate plenty, in fact, but she never ate without agonizing over it. Eating didn’t feel natural or good for her, but she did do it. So, no one expected that there was a problem.

Marjan smiles. She can’t help it. It’s her automatic response to almost any feeling. “I overdid it at chipotle last night.” Well, technically, she’d overdid two nights before, but she is still trying to make up for her binge by eating as little food as possible.

“That was last night. This is today,” T.K. says.

“I’m okay, really. I’ll have a snack bar in a bit.” She won’t but they don’t have to know that. T.K. looks worried, but he doesn’t say anything more, and for that, Marjan is relieved. She can avoid this one last meal. She he’ll have to have dinner because skipping that will look disordered, but missing lunch is good.

Dinner. Marjan tries not to think of dinner as she heads home, feeling exhausted after her shift. It’s morning now, and the sun is already up, shining in her eyes with too much intensity. But she can’t stop thinking about dinner, even though it was over twelve hours prior. She hadn’t eaten a lot, but she had eaten too much, and now, she figures, she might as well not stop. She’s never going to lose weight. She’s already blown her diet, so now, she might as well just eat everything in sight because what’s the point of moderation? She’s either starving or gorging herself, and there’s no in between.

She stops at the store, and as she checks out her pile of junk food. She goes home, and she sits on the floor, all her food surrounding her in a circle. She knows she should resist the snacks and sweets, but she has no control. This is why she’ll never be thin. She stops trying to fight her hunger. She unleashes it on the food, and polishes calories upon calories. Her lips are sore from all the salt, and her stomach is so full that she feels like she might throw up, but she won’t. She punishes herself by not allowing herself to throw up. She has to sit with the shame and self-loathing.

She goes to bed with a full stomach, hoping that sleep will take the discomfort away and make her throat feel less scratchy— the corners of chips always scratch when she’s shoving them down without taking much time to chew. _Tomorrow,_ she promises, _I will not eat anything._ She’ll only allow herself black coffee.

She wakes up two days later, and she feels light again. Two days of fasting will do that. She doesn’t want to get up, but the bathroom calls to her, and she pushes her heavy limbs up from the bed. She goes to the bathroom. She steps on the scale and sees that she’s down .8 pounds from yesterday. She wants the number to be lower, but she’ll take it. She gets dressed, refusing to look in the mirror. She puts on her hijab. She goes to work. She grabs a coffee and skips breakfast.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading.


End file.
